What's in a Name
by penvision
Summary: Eight-year-old Trini never wants to get married


Eight-year-old Trini hides behind her father, fingers tangled in his borrowed sea green scrubs, and peeks her head around his broad back, eyes wide. Stares at her mother, tucked under a pile of thin blankets in the hospital bed; her skin clammy, her hair stuck to her forehead, her cheeks flushed. Trini had heard her screams from the clinic's small waiting room just half an hour ago, can still hear them now-

No, the screams do not belong to her mother; they belong to the two wrinkled babies bundled in her arms. Everyone has been so excited for the twins, and Trini knows that she is supposed to be, too, but so far all that they have done is cause her mother pain and wail.

Trini's father rests his hand on top of her head, and she looks up at him, startled. He gives her a reassuring smile and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. "Don't you want to meet your brothers?"

Trini tucks behind his back again and burrows into him, shakes her head against the scratchy fabric, "they're loud, and wrinkly. I don't like babies."

Her mother sighs, "you will, someday you'll find a boy and get married have babies of your own."

Trini had known that she does not like boys, and now she knows that she does not like babies, either; "I'm never getting married!"

…

Kim leans back on her designated driftwood log and watches with half lidded eyes as Jason tosses another scrap of wood onto their dwindling bonfire. Trini turns in her arms and cuddles closer, tucks her nose into her neck, and Kim smiles, content, as she wraps the threadbare quilt around them a little tighter.

"...Twins soccer match tomorrow..."

Kim kisses Trini's crown, hides her widening grin in her girlfriend's hair, amused; Trini thinks out loud when she is drifting to sleep and Kim loves it. "You're so cute."

"Mm not," Trini huffs. Sighs. Mumbles, "...How did Zack get stuck on the top of the radio tower, anyway? ...Idiot..."

Kim watches Zack try to wrestle the last Hershey bar from Jason, who holds it just out of his reach. "Yeah, he's our idiot, though."

"Hmm," Trini hums into her collarbone, "…yeah... need milk...," Kim kisses her temple. "...Kim?"

"Mhmm?"

"Gonna marry you someday..."

Kim tenses, her face flush, her heart pounding in her chest, her throat. "Trini..." Trini's breathing is deep, even, and Kim hugs her closer, overwhelmed with raw love for her girlfriend.

…

It becomes their thing; a promise of a future together.

Kim mumbles it through lips pressed softly against Trini's forehead as she lays on the too skinny cot in the spaceship's infirmary, unconscious for a third day; "I'm gonna marry you someday." She follows it with a chaste kiss; a long press of lips to too cool skin, and reluctantly lets Jason lead her to food and sleep.

Trini leans back against Kim's counter, arms crossed, and rolls her eyes as her girlfriend swats at the smoke billowing from the pot of what was supposed to be pasta with a hand towel, "I can't believe I'm gonna marry you someday."

Kim chucks the towel at her, pouting, "you don't have to."

Trini catches it and pushes herself off of the counter, crossing the small kitchen and putting the lid on the pot to smother the smoke. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses Kim's nose, "nah, I'm gonna."

…

"Hart-Gomez!" Trini playfully bumps Kim's hip as she passes her in the apartment complex's hallway, arms stacked with boxes.

"Gomez-Hart!" Kim sidles by her, faking struggling with an oversized armchair.

"Hart-Gomez!" Trini shouts from the back of the moving truck as she and Billy lift the couch.

"Gart! Homez!"

"Shut up Zack!" "Shut up Zack!"

…

Trini slowly wakes up to the muted calls of seagulls, the rhythmic ebb and flow of water lapping against sand, the faint tang of salt in the air. She watches the bleached white curtains curl and billow in the breeze from the open hotel window as she tries to orient herself, stretches her arms above her, blinks away the last wisps of the dream of her brothers' births. " _I'm never getting married_ ," echoes in her head as the new gold band on her ring finger catches her eye. She rubs the metal, smiles as she remembers Kim walking down the aisle.

Lips brush her shoulder, the back of her neck, and she rolls over to face her wife. She cannot keep the smile off of her face as she takes in Kim wrapped in white sheets, "good morning, Mrs. Gomez."

Kim grins into the kiss, "good morning, Mrs. Hart."


End file.
